Researchers: Bones lead to identification of new dinosaur species

CLEVELAND -- Bones found over the past two years have led to the identification of two new species of heavily armored dinosaurs larger than elephants, a researcher said Monday.

The species, both 30-feet long, are of an ankylosaur, or club-tailed armored dinosaur, and a clubless armored dinosaur or nodosaur, said James Kirkland, incoming state paleontologist for Utah.

He said they were identified as new species because the bones differ from those of known dinosaurs. The bones include two partial skulls, limb bones, a handful of armor and some backbones of the ankylosaur and a shoulder blade and several dozen smaller bones of the nodosaur.

''These were fairly similar animals in many respects,'' Kirkland said in announcing the findings at a news conference at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Ankylosaurs and nodosaurs are ankylosaurids or heavily armored dinosaurs that originated in the Jurassic Period and are believed to have crossed a onetime land bridge from Asia to North America.

Kenneth Carpenter, a dinosaur paleontologist with the Denver Museum of Natural History, said the ankylosaur discovery pushes back the date of the land bridge some 20 million years to about 110 million years ago.

The remains of the plant-eaters were found in a Utah fossil bed. Casts of the bones are kept at the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah.

Robert M. Sullivan, senior curator of paleontology and geology at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, said the large ankylosaur -- nearly 50 percent bigger than others -- shows that the dinosaur family is more complex than earlier believed.